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Originally published on 30 August 2026.

Although the election is still two weeks away, I can already predict the outcome.

The winners will be the politicians. They will keep securing power and benefits for themselves. Those who enter Parliament or get government jobs receive or retain privileges akin to those of an aristocracy. Party subsidies will be increased, departing politicians will get senior jobs and generous severance packages. Communications staff, PR consultants and journalists will find new assignments funded by taxpayers.

As usual, the losers will be us citizens, who pay for it all through ever higher costs—taxes and mandatory fees—and poorer public services. That is what happens when we waste money pretending the public sector operates like a business while limiting private-sector revenue with unnecessary laws and bureaucracy. Bureaucracy also costs us as individuals and burdens the public sector itself. Civil servants are winners too: there will be more to regulate, document and monitor.

I do think this election differs considerably from previous ones. More has been promised than before. Politicians have been reasonably good at keeping election promises, but I doubt they will do as well after this election. Instead, they will need to become better at explaining why they could not deliver everything—blaming the outside world, coalition partners and the voters.

Life has taught me that if you keep doing what you have always done, you usually get what you have always got. We vote for the same politicians and get more of the same.